If you’ve had Spotify for a while now, then you’ll remember the days when you got to choose your username, provided that the one you chose wasn’t already taken by someone else. This username was a part of the credentials you’d use to sign in to your Spotify account and would display on your Profile for you and others to see.
Unfortunately, a few years ago this all changed. Spotify account holders started to notice that the username they had selected wasn’t being displayed in the app anymore. What was worse was that they could no longer use their username to log in. Instead, their Spotify username was displayed as a long string of seemingly random letters and numbers.
This is, for better or worse, still the case to this day. In fact, it is no longer possible to change your username. But why? Why is your Spotify username just random characters? And what can you do about it?
In this article, we’ll take a look at a few key changes Spotify made to the username selection process, and then go on to explain what you can do to customize your profile so that you no longer see the random characters, but a name of your own choosing instead.
Why is my Spotify username random characters?
Spotify has increased dramatically in popularity in recent years, so much so that the sheer number of users makes allowing each user to choose their own username almost impossible.
Plain and simple, Spotify decided to allocate a random combination of characters (letters and numbers) to each user as a username. Presumably, this is to make the job of organizing users’ data and profiles much easier for the Spotify team. Spotify still allowed you to choose your own ‘Display Name’, which would appear on your profile but stopped you from being able to ever edit your username.
What’s less obvious, is why this random character username would suddenly appear, when you’d already chosen your own ‘display name’. There are two reasons that this might be the case:
- You previously had your Facebook, Google, or Apple account linked to Spotify, through which Spotify was able to pull your data. This would have automatically set your Spotify ‘display name’ to appear as your display name on Facebook/Google/Apple accordingly. If you then disconnected Facebook, Google, and/or Apple from Spotify, then Spotify would no longer be able to pull your display name from the aforementioned, and would show your username in its place.
- If you like, simply reconnect Facebook, Google, or Apple to Spotify, and your Display Name should once again be imported from said service.
- You recently had to set up a new account, or you have set up a Spotify account for the first time, but you are yet to set a Display Name. Until you choose a Display Name (which we’ll explain how to do in a second), only the random character username will display on your Profile and Account.
How do you choose a Display Name to replace your Username on Spotify? (Desktop/Android/iOS)
- Open up the Spotify app on your chosen device, and sign into your account using your email address (associated with Spotify) and password
- Note: Once you have allocated yourself a ‘Display Name’, you should subsequently be able to use this at the sign in stage in future
- Navigate to ‘Settings’ by tapping the ‘Settings’ gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner of the Spotify homepage (Android/iOS). Or, left-click your random character username in the same place, and from the drop-down menu, select ‘Profile’ (Desktop)
- When in ‘Settings’, tap ‘View Profile’ (Android/iOS)
- When in ‘Settings’, tap ‘View Profile’ (Android/iOS)
- Once you’ve successfully navigated to your Profile on Spotify, just left-click or tap on your Display Name to pull up the editing window.
- Note: You can also customize your Display Picture/Profile Picture at this point.
- Lastly, enter a Display Name of your choosing. You can choose anything (which isn’t deemed offensive by Spotify’s User Agreement). Once satisfied with your Display Name, hit ‘Save’.
- You have successfully changed your Display Name, which shall now appear in the place of your random character Spotify-assigned username.
And that’s all there is to it! Whilst it is impossible to change your random character username, you can still choose your own Display Name. To do so, just follow our tutorials up above.
